


do without you

by useyourtelescope (thedreamygirl)



Series: for all the places I have been, I'm no place without you [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Pining, Slow Build, minor appearances by various other characters, partners with feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 10:09:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2808602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedreamygirl/pseuds/useyourtelescope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Knowing his new partner was a friend of Jasper’s from his time at the academy had made Bellamy anxious. He thinks pretty highly of Jasper now, but he’s come a long way since he used to follow Atom around like his pet, and Bellamy does not have the time or patience for a partner who is going to cling to his side, wanting his advice all the time. </p><p>Clarke Griffin is both everything he feared and the exact opposite.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jediseagull](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jediseagull/gifts).



> Happy Holidays jediseagull! I hope you enjoy reading this, I certainly had a lot of fun writing it. 
> 
> Thanks to Soph for looking this over. Title is from listening to 'Birds of a Feather' by The Civil Wars on repeat, which I would highly recommend to all.

It’s Clarke’s first day on her new job and it’s not going at all the way she pictured. She’s heard that Bellamy Blake was difficult to work with, of course, but _difficult_ is one thing – it’s downright impossible to work with someone who hasn’t even turned up.

At first, Clarke thinks she should cut him a little slack. There's some big case going on, and it’s all hands on deck – except hers, since she doesn't know where anything is yet. The Captain is pretty blunt about the whole thing and introduces her to her desk and a large stack of paperwork for her to get on with until someone, such as her partner, comes back and can get her up to speed.

She tries not to feel annoyed about it – it is some high profile murder with political ties so Clarke gets that everyone is too busy to fuss over the new arrival – but she wishes she was doing something to help the situation instead of being stuck sorting out old documents that her predecessor and new partner hadn't been bothered to file in a timely fashion.

There’s a steady flow of noise from the officers that walk past, many of whom seem to pause at the sight of the unfamiliar face in their midst, but no one approaches, and the Captain’s door stays shut, blinds firmly closed. Clarke knows not to expect too much already, but part of the reason she chose this precinct when she decided to move back home was because Jasper was always raving about how great the people were, and it’s a little hard to agree when no one is actually speaking to her. So when Clarke walks into the small kitchen area and finds a dark-haired woman rifling through the fridge, detective’s badge on her belt, she decides to take the plunge without continuing to wait for people to find her.

“Hi,” Clarke says brightly, and introduces herself.

It takes the woman a moment to realize Clarke’s words are directed at her, and she only looks over briefly and nods before turning her attention back to the fridge. “Raven Reyes.”

“Hi,” Clarke replies, searching her brain for something else to say before she repeats herself once more.

Raven closes the fridge, sandwich in hand, and looks Clarke’s way again. “So, you’re Blake’s new partner right?”

“Yes,” Clarke nods, pleased at being asked something, even if it only reminds her that said partner is still conspicuously absent.

“Have fun with that,” Raven says with a smirk before turning to leave, nodding at Jasper who, to Clarke’s immense relief, has just entered the kitchen.

“Hi, Clarke!” Jasper greets her with a smile and a brief, friendly hug. “How are you doing?”

“Okay…I think?”

“What do you mean?”

Clarke sighs, raising a hand to run it through her hair in frustration, and gets annoyed when she remembers she went to the extra-ordinary effort this morning of taming her frizzy hair into a too-tight ponytail in order to make a good impression, but there’s barely been anyone to make any impression on. “I just don’t like sitting around doing basically admin when there’s clearly so much going on. Plus, I just finally tried to introduce myself to someone – Raven, and…it was kind of weird.”

“She did at least tell you her name though.” When Clarke rolls her eyes, Jasper smiles and raises his hands, placating her. “Look, today’s a weird day; we’ve all been working like crazy the last twenty four hours. And Raven’s lead on this case, so she’s extra stressed, you know? I think you two will get along really well once you get to know each other,” he assures Clarke.

He’s just started filling her in on the case when Raven pops her head into the doorway. “Jordan! I have to head back to the crime scene; can you and Atom go to the mayor’s office to collect the tapes?”

“Sure thing.”

Raven nods, then leaves, though not without sparing an acknowledging glance at Clarke. It’s not particularly welcoming, but it’s better than being ignored, which is an improvement from the morning so far.

“I should get going.”

“Of course,” Clarke agrees easily. “Do you mind showing me round later though?”

“Hasn’t Bellamy done that already?”

“I thought that he was working the same case as you guys …” Clarke trails off when Jasper’s face falls. “Clearly not then.”

Jasper grimaces before explaining, “He _was_ , but Raven got annoyed yesterday evening, said there were too many of us for what we could actually do at the time. Bellamy still had another open case so he said he’d focus on that until she needed him again. I noticed he wasn’t at his desk just now but I assumed he was around somewhere.”

Clarke clamps her lips shut and shakes her head.

“Yeah.” He pauses; face twisting uncomfortably. “He’s actually really not that bad once you get used to him, you know?”

“Is that how you have to introduce all your colleagues, Jasper?”

Jasper smiles a little as he starts backing away from her. “Hey, they’re your colleagues now too.”

“Thanks for that, by the way.”

“You’re going to love it here, Clarke, I promise!”

Clarke is most definitely not loving it when by the end of her first day she is still sorting out files and the infamous Detective Blake has yet to grace her with his presence. At least Raven gave her a task related to the big case so she finally feels more useful but Clarke had not expected to receive quite so many boxes of old records, nor for Jasper to bump into her when he was rushing through the precinct, causing Clarke to drop one of the full boxes all over the floor. (She remembers despite his marksmanship skills he’d always had his clumsy moments back at the academy; she’d just forgotten what it felt like to get caught up in one of them.)

Jasper apologizes as much as he can in the ten seconds he has to spare before rushing out again, picking up a couple of files and placing them next to Clarke’s computer keyboard. She holds back a sigh and waves him off before bending down to sort the rest, when her foot catches on the wheel of her chair, making her bump the side of her head against the drawers under her desk.

This is when Clarke gives up, finally pulling off the small band that was holding together the taut ponytail she had meticulously scraped back that morning, letting loose her messy waves and scowling as she attempts to reorganize the heap of files.

So, of course, this is also when Bellamy Blake decides to finally make an appearance.

Clarke is sitting on the floor by her new desk rubbing the sore spot on her head with her right hand, all but throwing files onto her desk with her left, when a pair of men’s black boots appear right next to her knees. Once she cranes her neck far back enough to see the owner’s face Clarke just knows this tall man wearing the confused yet somehow smug expression as he stands right next to the small mountain of disarrayed files – observing, but not helping – has to be her new partner.

She decides there’s no point standing up for this since she’s already down here and will be for a while. She takes a deep breath, brings both hands down to her lap, and does her best to offer him a pleasant smile. “Hi. I’m Clarke Griffin.”

He nods his acknowledgement, states, “Blake,” before taking one long stride over the files to reach his desk, and that’s clearly their introductions over, then.

Gritting her teeth, Clarke starts piling the files up a bit more neatly on the floor, remembering how tidy Bellamy’s desk is. As she tilts her head, the mild bump twinges and she lifts a hand to check it again, instinctively.

"You okay?"

Clarke looks up at that, but he sounds more amused than concerned and isn’t paying much attention to her response, more focused on emptying the satchel on his shoulder than on her.

Still, he did actually deign to say two words this time so she replies with a sharp nodded, “Yes,” before returning to the files and mentally wishing the day over already.

* * *

He hadn’t known what to expect from his new partner, but Bellamy certainly hadn’t pictured a meeting quite like that: her hunched over the grey tiled floor, dull beige files and bright golden hair surrounding her. When they speak during what’s left of that first day she is polite but clipped. If they make eye contact Clarke manages a small smile but she seems to be glaring at him just as much as at the files, which he finds weird but not entirely surprising.

The Captain had reminded Bellamy plenty of times that despite the case he needed to be in on time for Clarke’s arrival and show her around, but he’d woken up in a foul mood and it hadn’t really seemed the best time to meet his new partner.

Bellamy’s phone call the previous night with Octavia had been painful, to say the least. After a few weeks of alternating between fighting with and not speaking to his sister, she’d made the not speaking part a lot easier by leaving on an extended trip to Europe. It’s been over a month since she left so he’d been pleased to hear from her initially, until she informed him she would finally be meeting her Dad later that week. Considering _he_ had been the reason they’d started fighting in the first place it was really the last thing Bellamy wanted to hear about. In the morning it had seemed like the best solution was to just throw himself into actual work rather than babysitting some new recruit Jasper’s age, who would have been on the force long enough to figure the basics out anyway. Plus, he wasn’t particularly psyched about getting a new partner in the first place.

Bellamy wasn’t exactly devastated when Connor announced he would be transferring, but they’d worked together nearly thirteen months – the longest he’d stuck with someone (or someone had stuck with him, as Reyes would put it) since Murphy went off the rails a few years ago. Still, in that time he felt they’d managed to develop a good system, particularly since it was one where Connor was content to let Bellamy have his way and take the lead whenever he wanted. The Captain complained sometimes that they – Bellamy especially, apparently – needed better teamwork skills, but he was never too upset when they always got results.

Knowing his new partner was a friend of Jasper’s from his time at the academy had made Bellamy anxious. He thinks pretty highly of Jasper now, but he’s come a long way since he used to follow Atom around like his pet, and Bellamy does not have the time or patience for a partner who is going to cling to his side, wanting his advice all the time.

Clarke Griffin is both everything he feared and the exact opposite.

She has a lot of questions about everything, but they’re less the inquiries of a new pupil, more the demands of a superior officer. You would have thought from the way she talks sometimes that she’s the one who’s been a detective for 8 years, instead of 2, but pointing that out doesn’t shut her up – if anything, it makes her worse.

And for all that she seems to despise him, she literally will not leave him alone. One day she even follows him into the locker room on his way out of the office to tell him her ridiculous theory about their case. Bellamy shuts her down pretty harshly, before he turns to open his locker and starts changing his shirt, confident that she’s at least smart enough to know when the conversation is over.

He’s pulling his t-shirt over his head when he hears her retort back, and he emerges to notice how she’s politely turned her back to him as she continues to make these wild leaps with the little evidence they have. He shrugs on his jacket and doesn’t bother to zip it up before he slams his locker shut and strides out towards the parking lot. Clearly whatever he says isn’t making a difference, but he hopes at least she won’t stalk him outside, especially when she doesn’t have any of her things.

She does follow, though Clarke stops short of walking all the way to his car. As Bellamy settles down into the front seat he can see her storming back into the station, the swish of her hair just as angry as the clenched fists by her sides, but her hands look so small it makes him burst out into laughter. (Only because she can’t see him though. He thinks she might claw him or something if he laughed in her face.)

And yeah, when they catch up with one of the suspects the next day and it turns out her crazy theory was right, he’s surprised but that doesn’t really mean anything. “A lucky guess,” he tells her, and the responding haughty look in her eyes has nothing to do with him making an extra effort to add the “Lead” in front of “Detective” when he introduces himself at their next crime scene the following day.

After three weeks of this, he catches Raven alone in the break room. She can be annoying but she’s also pretty smart – too smart for her partners before Monroe, and even that took a while, and she’s complained about them all to him so Bellamy feels like he’s allowed to grumble about his current situation. He’s barely said two sentences before Raven shrugs and cuts him short with, “Clarke seems cool. Chill out, Blake,” and takes the long way back to her desk so that she walks past Clarke, flashing the blonde a friendly smile as she does so.

Jasper would normally be a good choice because he would listen to Bellamy talking about anything, but Jasper and Clarke are friends for some reason so Bellamy’s not going to bring it up with him. Bellamy’s still avoiding Octavia’s calls (a lot easier now that she’s stopped making them) so he ends up complaining to Atom one night after he’s had a few beers. Atom listens, nods a few times, but politely makes no judgments himself, which doesn’t make Bellamy feel any better about it.

Their next case sees them lumbered with a load of old records to comb over, and since their shift is nearly over, he gives Clarke a small stack from the box by his feet, hoping she’ll just leave once she’s finished with them.

Instead, when she’s done she asks for more, and the pattern repeats until Bellamy realizes she has no intention of going home until he does. He gives up with a sigh and drops the box with the remainder of the files into the centre of their desks, which at least gives him the added bonus of not having to look at her while they work.

They crack it that night and yes, he couldn’t have managed it on his own – or with Connor, who would have left to get home in time to watch the game. Clarke doesn’t say “I told you so” with her words because she does so with her eyes, which he can feel quietly boring into the side of his neck the whole time they’re driving to make the arrest (even if she appears to be looking out the window whenever he chances a glance in that direction).

It doesn’t grate on him so much, but the uncomfortable quiet in the car does and he doesn’t know how to break it. The arrest goes smoothly, but the awkwardness is there on the way back as well, this time punctuated by random mutterings from the perp in the backseat, until the latter finally gets too much and Bellamy barks, “Be quiet!” over his shoulder just as Clarke growls, “Shut up.” The guy simply grumbles again, at which Clarke turns her head round and fixes him with a look, and though Bellamy only gets the side view, it looks way worse than anything she’s thrown his way.

Their perp quickly closes his mouth and leans back against the headrest, causing Bellamy to chuckle quietly. Clarke catches his eye as she turns back in her seat and the corners of his mouth curl up in a smile. Her lips stretch pleasantly as she stifles a laugh before they both resume staring out the window, completing the journey back in silence.

* * *

An impressive number of closed cases plus a few late-night group drinking sessions later, and Clarke thinks she was lucky to have ended up with Bellamy. He can still be difficult – infuriating sometimes – but he is really good at what they do and, what surprised her the most, he really cares about the cases, even the little ones she’s seen other detectives brush aside. She respects that.

It turns out their methods are quite compatible now they’re actually trying to work together, but it’s a little more than that too. She realizes one Friday night when Jasper herds them all into the bar after work that she’s started to find Bellamy’s presence reassuring, even when he’s off in the corner playing pool with Atom while she and Jasper are trying to help Jasper’s roommate Monty stand up again after challenging Raven of all people to a drinking contest (there was really no contest).

Still, she’s aware that although Bellamy’s the colleague she spends most of her time with at work, she actually knows the least about him. He’s not exactly the quiet one on a night out, he’s just good at steering the conversation away from himself. Clarke doesn’t want to be nosy – she purposely doesn’t look him up or anything, or ask Jasper or Raven for information – but she doesn’t think it’s too much to ask that she know a little bit about her partner’s personal life (she knows way more about Monty at this point, and she’s only met him four times). That realization, combined with a lack of sleep, is what prompts her to speak up when his cell phone lights up just after midnight while he's at the photocopier and she’s reaching over his desk to grab a piece of evidence.

"Who's Octavia?" His surprise is evident so she quickly adds, "Your phone’s just popped up a birthday reminder for tomorrow – well, today, technically."

“Oh,” he nods as he returns to his desk. "She's my sister, she must have added that to my phone," Bellamy frowns as if he's annoyed his sister thought he wouldn't remember without it, but the tone of his voice is soft, fond even, and it makes Clarke smile. Wells, her best friend since childhood, feels like family but she’s always wondered what it would be like to actually have a sibling.

"I didn't know you had a sister. Are you guys close?"

He pauses for longer than is reasonably necessary, staring at the phone that's now in his palm. "Sometimes," he says finally, no longer frowning but not meeting her eyes either.

His short response suddenly makes Clarke feel like she's poking her nose in where it very much doesn’t belong. Clarke’s relationship with her mother has been strained ever since her father passed away, which isn’t something she’s mentioned to Bellamy so she’s got no excuse to pry into his family if he doesn’t want to share either. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to -"

"No it's okay," he says gently, looking at her this time. "We just have a... complicated relationship. We haven’t been speaking much recently,” Bellamy pauses, as if debating whether to say more so Clarke keeps quiet as he decides. “Octavia’s not actually in the country right now,” he explains, “she’s travelling all over Europe. This week’s Spain – well, meant to be, I think.”

"Oh, wow, that's so cool. I was going to say if you called her now you might be the first person to wish her happy birthday, but with the time difference…and anyway she might be asleep like a normal person so bad idea," Clarke laughs and shrugs off her suggestion but Bellamy seems to be considering it.

"Actually, I think I will call her now." He gets up from his seat but before he starts toward the empty break room he gestures to the numerous documents and bits of evidence laid out in front of them, "That is, if you don't mind.”

She shakes her head. "No, of course not."

Bellamy nods, says “Thanks,” and smiles down at her with his whole face, that rare thing she’s only seen directed at inanimate objects; usually a piece of evidence when he knows he’s solved a case, or his first coffee after a particularly long night.

Clarke’s not certain what she did to earn it, but she smiles back anyway.

* * *

Bellamy doesn't really think of Clarke as his friend, as opposed to his colleague, until one day when he's speaking to Octavia. She’s just regaled him with tales of Florence and Pompeii and all he can offer is a watered down version of his last case when she suddenly interrupts him with an exclaimed, "Wait, Clarke's a girl?"

It surprises him so much he loses where he was in his story and can only respond with a confused, "Huh?"

"You've mentioned Clarke a lot, but...I just always thought you were talking about a guy."

"Oh," Bellamy pauses for a moment, mulling this over. It’s been a few weeks since Octavia’s birthday and though they may not be completely past their complicated family issues, they’ve both been making much more of an effort than they were before she left. Between his workload and the time difference it’s easier to email than speak and Bellamy’s emails are always short and mainly responses to her stories rather than information about his life, but he thinks he must have worked a pronoun in there at least once. "Does it matter?" he asks finally.

Octavia laughs and he can hear her smiling down the phone. "Well no, it's just you've never had any really close female friends... And your new best friend is a girl!"

Bellamy rolls his eyes. "She's my partner; of course we spend a lot of time together but that doesn't make -"

“Yeah, I know you work together,” Octavia cuts him off, “but lately Clarke is like the only person you talk about in a non-work context too - like not just,” and here she alters her voice to a deep gravelly tone that sounds nothing like him at all, “'Clarke and I solved this case,’ but ‘Clarke mentioned this new movie that sounds really terrible but something I think you'd like,’ and ‘I lent Clarke my book on-'"

"Okay, okay I get it, jeez!" He really didn't think he talked about Clarke that much, though if he did, his sister clearly would not make a good detective if she only _just_ figured out Clarke was female. Octavia always did like winding him up, but he supposed it probably was true that at the moment he didn’t have a lot of other people to talk about. Most of the friends he has he knows through work or the academy, but he doesn’t really have time for anything else.

As it is, he even has to take Octavia’s phone call from his desk at the precinct, though aside from the Captain who’s shut up in his office again, no one else is there so his conversation isn’t interrupting anyone. Still, he’s not really sure what to make of Octavia’s comments, and he finds himself staring almost accusingly at Clarke’s empty chair for the rest of the call, before he gets back to the case that’s kept him so late.

The next morning, Bellamy’s head jolts up when a loud bang reverberates through his ears, his "I'm awake," convincingly confident despite his eyes still being closed. They open at the smell of hot coffee, re-adjusting to the dim light of the precinct. He thinks Clarke's smile is too innocent for someone who just kicked the side of his desk rather unceremoniously, but she is holding the only thing that will get him through the day so he doesn’t complain.

She tilts her head as he takes the drink from her, causing a cascade of blonde waves to obscure the amused look on her face. “I knew you would be staying late, but not this late. You should have said, I could have rescheduled with my mom.”

He stifles a yawn behind the coffee cup before taking a glorious sip. “I didn’t think it would be this late either. Guess I lost track of time.” It’s also not really her case; they picked up two at the same time and it made sense to work them independently unless they needed help, which he probably does, but not enough to make Clarke miss her first meeting with her mother since she moved back.

“Make much progress?” she asks, removing her jacket and hanging it up on the stand near her chair.

“Unfortunately, no,” Bellamy grumbles. He starts to relate what he learnt the night before and Clarke listens attentively, until she suddenly looks distracted, settling her own coffee cup down on her desk and rifling through her drawers.

It’s not at all like her normal behavior when they’re working a case and it throws him slightly. “Uh, Clarke? If this is boring you, then – ”

“No, it’s not that,” she says, continuing to open drawers and search through the never-ending stack of files on the side of her desk, “it’s just what you just said – it reminded me of something…”

Bellamy raises an eyebrow. “Like what?”

“I can’t remember,” she begins, but then stops suddenly, swiveling her chair to face him dead on, palms flat on the desk. “Raven!”

Bellamy looks over his shoulder to double-check, “Yeah, I don’t think she’s in yet.”

Clarke shakes her head. “No, I mean, there was that case – you remember, I worked that murder with her and Monroe while you were on that robbery?” Bellamy nods as Clarke runs a finger down the tabs of her files and pulls at one three-quarters of the way down. It comes out cleanly, and he starts to lift a hand he’d been warming on his coffee cup to take the file from her when instead she holds it close and starts wheeling her chair around.

Bellamy’s too tired to question her, just watches as Clarke insinuates herself at his desk the same way she has in his life; barreling forward unapologetically, hair freaking _everywhere_ , leaving it to him to be the one to step back – or in this case, wheel slightly to the left so he still has some semblance of personal space and her blonde curls aren’t prickling the skin on his arm anymore.

She ignores his “Hey!” as she snatches up one of the files laying flat on his desk and thrusts the one she’s brought with her into his free hand.

Bellamy doesn’t wait for an explanation that he knows isn’t coming, just puts the coffee down and starts reading her file, the way she’s doing with his. Understanding dawns a few minutes later when they both look up at each other, hands over the matching clue in both files. It’s one of those moments that Bellamy thinks should be animated with a light bulb flashing over their heads, but Clarke’s bright, excited grin will have to do.

He gulps down half of his coffee, ignoring the way it burns in his throat before he jumps out of his chair and grabs his jacket. He shoves his phone into his pocket and catches his car keys with one hand when Clarke throws them his way.

“Don’t wait up,” he says on his way out and she smirks in response, already starting to wheel herself back round to her desk.

It occurs to Bellamy later as he's slapping handcuffs on the culprit, that he never said thank you, but he forgets when he gets home and promptly passes out on the couch. The thought returns when he’s getting ready for work the next day, but it’s weird because it’s not something he’s ever really done with Clarke, or anyone, for that matter – not because he’s a total dick, but it’s their job to work cases and he doesn’t think he needs to go around thanking everyone for doing what they should be already. Still, it feels different this time, and he should probably say something, but words were never his strong suit.

When he buys their coffee that morning he decides to get her one of those pastries he’s seen her bring in sometimes, but he doesn’t know which kind she likes best. Bellamy buys a few and lets her have first pick (she might have helped him out, but he did sleep through his last two meals; he was not grateful enough to let her have all three).

Clarke takes the chocolate croissant with a pleased smile and savours it, tearing off big pieces intermittently and popping them into her mouth with one hand while she types away at her computer with the other, a small giggle her only acknowledgement of how he scoffs down the other pastries before his machine has even finished loading up.

* * *

By now Clarke knows better than to have an expectation of what her day will be like when she walks into the precinct on any given morning. Still, she’s not prepared to find Bellamy bent over his desk, coughing violently at regular intervals as the rest of the staff flinch away from him, and Jasper moves increasing amounts of paperwork to the left edge of his desk to create a “germ barrier”.

Aside from Clarke, Atom is the only one who dares to go near Bellamy and question his health (and sanity), but when Bellamy continues to insist he’s _fine_ , Atom eventually shrugs and sits back down.

Clarke takes the opposite approach.

She only has to push his chair up to the corridor by the kitchen (thank fuck those things have wheels) until he finally acquiesces, clearly realizing that if he’s not able to push back hard enough to stop Clarke from rolling him through the building then he can’t possibly be at full strength.

Clarke’s only just started pulling into reverse to leave the parking lot when he falls asleep, sprawled all over the length of her back seat. She laughs at the sight of Bellamy’s calves tucked under him awkwardly, too tall to lie down fully in her normal-size car, not realizing until nearly ten minutes later that it means she doesn’t know where to go.

She does have some idea, of course (it’s not like she’s been driving round aimlessly), but it hits Clarke that she doesn’t know his actual address. She could tell you the block he lives on, and that he owns the apartment, and, considering that incident last month where water from the upstairs’ bathroom leaked into his bedroom and he had to sleep on his couch until the ceiling got fixed, it’s definitely not on the top floor. But it’s a block full of apartment buildings, and she cannot actually take Bellamy to his door when she doesn’t know which one it is.

Clarke pulls over and glares through the rear-view mirror into the backseat as if it’s entirely his fault (which it is) and is irritated to find his peaceful sleeping face, with the sunlight streaming in through the windows highlighting the sprinkling of freckles on his tan skin, is a hard one to stay mad at. She reaches over into the backseat and is relived to find his wallet in the first jacket pocket she tries so it doesn’t feel weirder than it has to (and, yes, she could call Raven and get her to look the address up in a minute but that feels more embarrassing somehow).

His driver’s license shows she’s not far from the right building and when she gets there Clarke stops the car a little more harshly this time, hoping the sudden movement will wake him up so she doesn’t have to.

He jolts upright so quickly he would have banged his head on the car ceiling if he’d had enough energy to shift that far. Instead Bellamy makes this weird, jerky motion of lifting his head to window level and then leaning back to rest it uncomfortably against the door handle.

“We’re here.”

Bellamy groans. “Have you always been this bad at driving?”

“You’re welcome,” she grinds out through her teeth. When his only response is to sigh a little and close his eyes, Clarke softens slightly. “Do you need help getting out?”

“No,” Bellamy says, a little too quickly. She wonders as he clumsily tries to make his way out of the car if it’s more that Bellamy just doesn’t want to be helped, which would normally be enough for her to at least unlock the apartment door, but Clarke’s feeling oddly annoyed so she settles for just opening the car door. She hands his back his wallet, and he’s too busy coughing to bother questioning her garbled story as he trudges away from her and up the path.

She’s back in the driver’s seat when he calls out, “See you tomorrow.”

“I better not if you’re still croaking, old man!” she yells through the open window, smirking when he moves a hand behind his back in an obvious attempt to give her the finger before his arm jerks downwards again as if even that is too much effort for his body to make.

She does actually see him the next day, when he saunters into the office as if he hadn’t been coughing up a lung twenty-four hours earlier.

To be fair, he does look visibly healthier and the cough sounds like a human person now. He’s probably still ill enough to warrant a second day off, but this is Bellamy so everyone knows better than to point it out, and Jasper creates a paper barrier on the side of his desk only half as tall as the day before.

Clarke sinks slightly back into her chair when Bellamy puts a cup of coffee on her desk before sitting down with his own.

She admits, a little guiltily, “I bought myself one today. You didn’t reply to my message last night so I thought you wouldn’t be in.”

“I was out cold last night,” he explains after taking a sip of his, “but I felt fine when I woke up this morning. Didn’t seem much point in texting you when I’d see you in half an hour.”

“Right.” She stares at the new cup, inches away from her nearly empty one with the matching label and order scribbled on the side. She strangely feels like she should apologize, which is ridiculous, especially when part of her still feels like _he_ needs to apologize for being so closed off that his own partner didn’t know his full address. “Do you want it?” she offers finally.

He glances over at her like she’s the one who spent most of the previous day unconscious. “I’m not drinking that milky crap you call coffee.”

“Says the man who has enough sugar in his to give himself diabetes.”

“Hey, I passed my last health check with flying colours…unlike some people I know,” he finishes with a smirk.

Clarke can’t help taking the bait, “There’s no point taking someone’s blood pressure when their appointment takes place while working two stressful investigations at once. Of course it’s going to be high!”

“I seem to remember someone else working both those cases with you…”

He chuckles in triumph, but it soon turns into a mild cough causing Clarke to roll her eyes. “If you won’t leave then I’m going to take a leaf out of Jasper’s book,” she explains, pushing a large stack of files across her desk so that it covers the space next to her computer that she can normally see him across.

She can hear the smile in Bellamy’s rough voice when he finishes coughing. “Maybe I’ll finally be able to get some work done, without you glaring at me and bugging me all the time.”

Clarke doesn’t say anything, just takes enough folders off the top so she can see his face, and returns his smirk. As she takes the lid off the new cup and pours the dregs of her coffee into the fresh batch she figures, whatever it is, this strange friendship they have, she is perfectly happy for it to remain as it is.

* * *

Bellamy is also content for things to remain unchanged. He just doesn’t realize it until he finds out that they wont.


	2. Chapter 2

It’s Clarke’s first day on her new assignment and she’s spent so much time picturing what it won’t be like that she finds she’s not at all prepared for how it is.

She’s pleased – thrilled, even – to have been asked to join this detail. Clarke knows it’s partly accidental, anyone else at the precinct could’ve arrested that drug dealer, unaware that he was part of a much larger investigation (one that answered to the Deputy Commissioner no less), but they wouldn’t have asked her to become part of the team if they hadn’t thought she’d be valuable.

Clarke’s always wanted to end up on an assignment like this, not just because of what it can mean for her career, but because she knows she can do a good job here. She should be excited, and she is in a lot of ways. She just doesn’t understand why she feels disappointed the first time she sits down at her new, temporary desk and looks across at a blank wall or why after a few days she’s managed to pick up most of the details of the investigation, but only a few of her new co-workers names.

Clarke ends up working with Lincoln a lot and she feels like they get on relatively well though it’s hard to tell because he doesn’t feel like talking much. She’s seen that’s how he is with everyone so she doesn’t take it personally and Clarke is more than able to carry a conversation by herself, but that seems to irritate him, even if Lincoln never says it outright. They spend much of their time together on stakeouts so they’re often sat in silence in cars or on rooftops, which is fine, if a little boring.

Plus, she’s not really used to working in silence. Clarke’s gotten too used to the noise of the precinct – not just the background noise and chatter from everyone moving around, but the specific rackets made by the people she’s come to know so well. She misses Jasper raving about his new favourite bands, tapping out the rhythm of their best song on his desk; Raven enthusiastically recounting last night’s game in excruciating detail while she prises apart the printer just because she feels like it; Bellamy talking about…well, anything really.

One evening, when she and Lincoln have been sitting quietly for hours in a parked car, staring out the window, Clarke realizes all of a sudden that after all their conversations she misses the sound of Bellamy’s voice more than anything he said, and she is not at all sure what that means.

That night when Clarke goes home she has her regularly monthly chat with Wells, but when the call is over she ends up turning the phone over in her hand instead of putting it away. Eventually, she looks up Bellamy’s contact card, one that hasn’t been used since before she saw him on her last day at the precinct. She’s shared a couple of phone calls with Raven (the last of which ended with them making plans to meet up the next time they have the same day off), a number of texts from Jasper (mostly just random exclamations about weird things that happened at the precinct, but it was nice to know he was thinking of her), but a whole lot of nothing from Bellamy.

Clarke’s not surprised, really. When she thinks about it, they didn’t ever do anything together that wasn’t somehow related to work, but she still feels like he could have at least tried to say ‘Hi,’ or something.

Then again, so could she. She quickly types out a message to him, something general just asking how everyone and everything is, and hits send before she can rethink the decision, the wording, or the fact that he can see exactly what time she thought to send it.

There’s a reply waiting when she wakes up.

* * *

Bellamy gets two weeks of supporting the others, but mainly working cases by himself – something he’d been arguing with the Captain over for years – when Atom gets injured. Thankfully (if one can really be thankful for much when taking a bullet) his life is quickly deemed out of danger, but his ability to use a gun is shot and it’s going to take some time and a bit of rehab before they know which way his recovery is headed.

The Captain insists that as soon as Atom is able to return to work he’ll get his old job back (Atom is the only one who brings up the fact that this is an _if_ rather than a _when_ as he tries to flex his fingers during one particularly uncomfortable hospital visit, before Monroe glances away and Jasper quickly changes the subject), but the city’s crime rate hasn’t fallen as sharply as the precinct’s number of detectives, so it’s Bellamy who ends up with a new partner.

On Nathan Miller’s first day, Bellamy is in early especially to meet him, which is how he overhears the new boy get told off for his “inappropriate attire” by the Captain. Bellamy looks over his shoulder and through the half-open blinds sees Miller slowly remove a beanie off his head before he leaves the Captain’s office, shutting the door firmly behind him. Miller stops abruptly and looks a little sheepish upon realizing someone else overheard them, but after Bellamy jerks his head towards the Captain and says quietly, “Bet you he’ll be letting us wear those hats indoors when he finishes losing his hair,” Miller responds with a smile and just like that, they’re partners.

The worst thing he can say about Miller is that it takes him three tries to get Bellamy's coffee order just right. After how stubborn and just plain irritating he’d found Clarke at the beginning (and more than a few times after that) he’d expected to have to try a lot more, but they settle in to working with each other surprisingly quickly. Bellamy knows this is a good thing, but he’s not used to having things come easy, and some days he finds it suspicious how eager Miller appears to help confirm even Bellamy’s more far-fetched theories, when Clarke seemed to take pride in proving him wrong.

Not that he compares them of course – well, it’s only natural that he would, a little, but it’s not like he’s actively comparing who is better at what or anything (although at least with Miller he isn’t constantly finding long blonde hairs on everything – like, literally everything; his desk, his car, their case files. It was a wonder she had that much hair left still on her head). And it’s normal that he would think about Clarke sometimes, considering how much time they’d spent together before.

Bellamy’s booking someone in one day when Myles, one of the younger officers, asks him how Clarke’s finding her new assignment. He hesitates but is saved from having to admit that he doesn’t really know by Raven, arriving with a perp of her own, who immediately fills him in. Raven only mentions general things, her level of detail directly corresponding with the level of Myles and Clarke’s acquaintance, but Bellamy wants to know more. When Raven greets him shortly after, it’s the perfect opportunity to ask a follow-up question, but he doesn’t.

Bellamy knows he could – and, if he’s being honest, should - have the information first-hand, and it’s not as if he’s never spoken to (well, texted) Clarke since she left. It didn’t bother him that she took the detail either; he knows that it wouldn’t have been the assignment for him now, not after that whole mess with Murphy, but he understands why it’s right for Clarke, knows he would have done the same when he was her age, only a few years on the job and still feeling like he had something to prove.

It’s just that talking to her feels so much harder now, and not just because she’s no longer two feet away from him every working day. Now he has to actually think about what he wants to say and then read her response, when he’s too used to just talking at her and seeing her immediate reply, usually in the form of an eye roll. He has a mental catalogue of Clarke’s myriad of expressions: the smirk that wrinkled the corners of her eyes when they complained about the captain, her furious anger at the injustice of some of the cases they dealt with – equally as menacing as the frustrated scowl she reserved just for him. He remembers sharing a joke with nothing more than a look and wonders when her face had become something he wanted to be just down by his shoulder, rather than something that simply was.

He’s leaving work early that day; Octavia’s flight is arriving that evening and he’s determined to pick her up on time. He’d promised to be her airport taxi back when she’d booked her plane tickets, but as they weren’t speaking by the time her departing flight had rolled around a free ride hadn’t exactly been in the picture. It feels like they’re back to their old selves and he wants that to continue now that they’re going to be on the same continent again, so he works faster than usual that afternoon to get everything done before he has to leave.  
  
When he gets out of work he stands in the parking lot, phoning Atom to check on his progress quickly before setting off, and suddenly notices the scaffolding around their usual coffee place. He takes a moment to read the signs, and after he finishes the call Bellamy punches out a text as he’s getting into his car, letting Clarke know he’s going to have find a new place to start getting his morning coffee.

Clarke’s quick, over zealous response of _“What? NOO!!! : ( ( “_ reminds Bellamy that he forgot to insert the word “temporarily” in there somewhere and of her pout that time she found out the bar had run out of nuts because she and Raven had eaten them all before she drunkenly planted her face into the small bowl of olives she’d been offered instead.

“ _Just until Winter_ ,” Bellamy writes back quickly, explaining their usual is just being refurbished. He starts driving, and does his best to ignore the beeping sound a few minutes later that tells him she’s replied. He manages to wait until the second red light before he picks up his phone again.

* * *

Clarke had never been close to Atom, though she had always liked him so it is out of genuine concern that she goes to visit him in the hospital. It’s also a little for Bellamy, but mainly for Jasper; the quiet, distracted tone of his voice over the phone as he explains that Atom might never regain full use of his arm makes her chest contract even more painfully than listening to his first frantic voicemail straight after the shooting.

Anya is a less elusive, but stricter boss than the Captain, so Clarke’s not surprised that she looks annoyed when Clarke says she wants to leave early. However, once the situation and hospital visiting hours have been explained, Anya is actually quite understanding, and Lincoln even drives her to the hospital.

Clarke feels awkward at first as they’d never actually spent any time alone before, even more so when she notices how quickly Atom’s eyes flicker over the badge that she’d meant to tuck out of sight. Atom answers her queries about his condition kindly, but vaguely, and he also steers clear of the other obvious topic of conversation, her current assignment, so they end up talking about the people they have in common. Despite his insistence on not spelling out how bad things could end up for him if rehab doesn’t go well, Atom is more than willing to talk about how supportive everyone at the precinct has been. Sharing anecdotes about their friends lightens the rest of her visit, and when he jokes that it’s been a long time since he’s seen Bellamy quite so often outside of work, Clarke purposely ignores the sudden pang in her chest because this is so not a situation to be jealous of.

Clarke talks to Jasper and Raven, and even Monroe that one time they run into each other buying groceries, about Atom’s accident, but Bellamy never mentions it – she simply doesn’t hear from him at all for about a week after it happens, then one day he texts her as if it didn’t. She tries to come up with a reply that matches his tone, then gives up and punches out a coded reply, before wondering if her ‘ _How are you??_ ’ sounds passive-aggressive, or needy, or both. (His straight-forward response tells Clarke that the extra punctuation was not enough to convey her tone.)

Weeks turn into a couple of months, during which Clarke hears from Bellamy regularly and yet still first learns about all the important things in Bellamy’s life from other people; his new partner from Raven over lunch, just before she goes into a rant about the new guy at Major Crimes; his sister’s return from Jasper, a comment he drops into conversation just before the lights go down in the indie movie theatre he and Monty have taken her to.

They make a big breakthrough in Clarke’s assignment the same day Raven texts her to say Monroe is transferring to another state, and although she doesn’t say it aloud, Clarke feels a little relieved. Now that the detail seems to be drawing to a close, she’s been thinking more about what it would be like to go back. The Captain had promised to keep her job for her, but she’s heard about how well Detective Miller is fitting in, and how it looks like Atom is going to, thankfully, regain full use of his arm, and she’s glad that she won’t feel like she’s replacing either of them. She’s proud of what they’ve accomplished on this assignment, and respects the people she’s worked with, but Clarke knows she won’t miss seeing them everyday them the way she misses her friends.

Monroe leaving means Clarke expects to be partnered with Raven, so she’s not surprised when the Captain confirms this before she officially goes back, and honestly, she’s excited. She knows theirs will be a good partnership and there won’t be any weirdness between them. Not that there will necessarily be any weirdness with Bellamy – at least not on his part – Clarke’s just a little… conflicted about seeing him again.

She’s torn between wanting to be able to put a face again to all the things that he told her while she was away, and wanting to slap him for all the things that he didn’t. Clarke wishes it hadn’t been so easy to avoid him, but even more she wants to believe that he hasn’t been trying to avoid her. Mostly, she hopes she can finally stop her eyes from wandering at the sight of every tall man with black messy curls she passes on the street.

* * *

It’s Clarke’s first day back and Bellamy’s not there.

It’s not intentional; he'd asked for the day off before he even knew when Clarke would be coming back, as soon as Octavia found out her moving in day for her new apartment. When he has time to consider it, Bellamy is a little disappointed but mostly fine. He figures one more day isn’t much after a few months, until he’s about to order lunch, remembers what Clarke’s regular Chinese take-out order is, and realizes he never told her he would be off. Bellamy thinks he’ll text her then, but it’s the middle of the day so she’ll have figured that out already. His second thought is just to ask how the day is going, but he wonders if that’ll just bring more attention to his unmentioned absence.

Octavia’s amused, “Have you forgotten how a phone works or something?” when she finds him in the kitchen staring into space, menu in one hand, phone in the other, snaps him out of it, and in the end he doesn’t text anything at all.

The next day he manages to sleep through his alarm, exhausted after lugging Octavia’s furniture back and forth until she finally decided on the best layout for every room. Bellamy gets ready in record time so he’s not too late, but Clarke’s still there before him. He’s walking down the corridor and stops suddenly when he sees Clarke looking intently at the bulletin board. Her loose blonde tendrils are falling onto a familiar worn leather jacket, her phone in one hand and a carton with two coffee cups in the other, and it’s like that’s just where he left her.

He feels awkward about trying to grab her attention, but if he doesn’t then it’s like he’s staring (he totally hasn’t been staring), so Bellamy settles on clearing his throat before saying, “Clarke?” and doesn’t understand why the word falls out of his mouth like a question instead of a statement when she is right in front of him.

She smiles, a wide, toothy grin, and they hug, only for the second time. Clarke has to juggle the items she’s holding first so that she can wrap an arm around his shoulder and Bellamy misjudges how far to lean down so his stubble scratches against the smooth skin of her forehead, but this one still doesn’t feel awkward because this one doesn’t mean goodbye.

When they pull back Clarke studies his face with a curious glint in her eyes, and he ducks his head self-consciously. “You look different.”

“You look the same,” he blurts out, belatedly realizing how terrible that sounds and starts to backtrack, “I mean, its not – “

She cuts him off with a deep, hearty chuckle. “Good to know you’re not too different then,” Clarke states.

It’s kind of an insult and though she goes silent her eyes are clearly still laughing _at_ him, not with him, but it warms him right through to his fingertips.

Then Raven walks by and grabs one of the coffee cups out of Clarke’s hand like its totally natural and obviously he didn’t think the coffee was for him, knows that Miller will have set Bellamy’s down on his desk already, but the action stings anyway.

"Blake, stop hogging Griffin, she and I have got a case to work. You're driving, Clarke." She walks away before she’s finished talking without even giving Clarke the opportunity to respond.

Clarke laughs. "Was she always this bossy?"

"I can still hear you!"

Her eyes smile up at him at Raven’s retort, before she shrugs. "Catch up with you later?" Clarke says apologetically.

Bellamy nods, but as the week goes on they keep missing each other, one of them leaving the building as the other is coming back in, or else they’re both there but too busy to chat (they do come in to actually work, he starts to remind himself). Clarke’s new desk is behind him, too far away to hold a conversation without raising his voice, but close enough that he’s acutely aware of when she is or isn’t there, and the first time he hears her chuckle at something Raven says Bellamy has to stop himself from twisting round to find out what the joke was.

The mental list of things he’s filed away as things to tell not text Clarke continues to grow, until Bellamy’s sure one day he’s going to turn around in his seat and just start talking at her about how well things are going with Octavia now that she’s back, or how he thinks maybe next year he will take an actual day off where he does something or goes somewhere, or how terrifying it was to watch Atom get shot but be too far away to do anything about it. He’s got a list of questions too, though even in his current state he knows better than to simply blurt out any generic question in the middle of the precinct when Jasper is in the vicinity.

The second Friday she's back Bellamy sees Jasper perch himself on the end of Clarke’s desk and insist that everyone needs to go out for drinks that night to celebrate her return. Clarke laughs good-naturedly and agrees, as does Raven, so Jasper makes a point to go round and let everyone know, and when it’s their turn Bellamy and Miller agree to join too.

But when it’s time to leave and the group stops by his desk Bellamy says he's got a lot of paperwork to finish and promises to catch up with them later. Miller quirks an eyebrow at him but doesn’t say anything, and no one else questions it – after all, it’s not like he’s ever been one to skip an invitation to the bar without good reason.

Bellamy finishes his paperwork half an hour later and goes over to Octavia's to help her with the unpacking he knows she’s been putting off. She's surprised, but cracks a beer open for him and points him towards the boxes of books she hasn’t touched yet. Octavia tells Bellamy to just dump them on the shelves in the living room before returning to her mountains of clothes that she claims she is sorting out to donate, but just starts trying on different combinations, flitting in between rooms intermittently to chat, and ends up keeping them all.

Bellamy spends the night sorting his sister’s collection by genre, then author, noting which books were originally his copies and which of them he actually cares enough to want back. He definitely doesn’t spend any time wondering what everyone got up to at the bar, or if it mattered that he wasn’t there.

* * *

Clarke suspected he wouldn’t show back at the precinct, knew for certain at the start of hour two (investigating a case, sure, but Bellamy Blake could never spend that long just on paperwork), though that doesn’t prevent her from turning her head ever so slightly every time the door opens for an hour more.

She still enjoys herself. Quite a lot of people from the precinct showed, and some even brought friends, so it’s not like Clarke is short on people to have fun with. After they get kicked out of the bar at closing time Raven slinks off with Wick from Major Crimes, while Clarke, Jasper, Monty and Miller end up wolfing down junk food together before deciding it might finally be time to go to bed. Clarke and Miller take the same bus home and they get on so well that she finds it difficult to stay annoyed with how he’s re-arranged her old desk space or jealous when Bellamy’s hand rests on his shoulder after a job well done.

It’s not that Clarke wants to be partners with Bellamy again – not that she actively _doesn’t,_ they did make a great team – but she really likes working with Raven, and their dynamic’s been just as good at getting results. Still, she feels like she wants _something_ and she doesn’t know how to define it. ‘Boyfriend’ sounds a little child-ish and inadequate, but the feeling like she wants to be close to his face just sounds lame. (Accurate. But still pathetic.)

The way they keep missing each other at work feels like a bad farce before it just becomes painful. One day she’s glancing around while she’s on the phone and sees Bellamy standing next to Jasper’s chair. His broad shoulders fill out his navy jacket as he points to something on the desk, his expression firm but patient as he talks something through with Jasper when she’s interrupted by Raven tapping her wrist to point out she was no longer on hold.  
  
If Raven realizes why Clarke had missed the sound of the other voice down the line she doesn’t mention it, for which Clarke is grateful. Besides it’s not like she was staring in that way (not that she’s never appreciated that Bellamy is decent to look at), she just wishes it wasn’t so difficult for them to just have a proper conversation, one that other people weren’t present at.

Clarke doesn’t know what it is that finally makes the decision for her. The day is completely ordinary and just like many that have come before it, but one afternoon when she sees Bellamy go into the empty break room, she follows and corners him by the vending machine. "Hey.”

He nods, smiles even, but his attention is still focused on his snack.

“So, you doing anything tonight?"

Bellamy looks up as he pulls the bag of chips out the bottom of the machine. "Jasper organizing Friday night drinks again?"

"Actually _I_ was wondering if you'd like to get a drink,” Clarke hesitates a second before clarifying, “just us?"

She’s not sure how to take the flurry of reactions he has to her invitation; surprise is followed by a small smile, until he suddenly he looks at the floor and outright laughs. Bellamy stands up before explaining, "I actually promised Octavia I would go over to hers tonight; her shower’s not working and I said I’d take a look at it.” It sounds like a lame excuse, but he looks genuinely regretful to already have plans so she doesn’t feel so bad, especially when he adds, “But you’re off tomorrow right? Do you maybe want to, uh…grab some lunch or something?”

Clarke’s smile stretches thin, as she leans against the glass of the vending machine. "I’m actually going to be at my mom’s all day tomorrow, it’s this thing family thing. I don’t really want to go, but I haven’t seen her much recently, let alone everyone else so – “

Bellamy waves his hand, gently brushing aside her need for an explanation, and mirrors her pose. “How about next weekend?”

“Next weekend?” Clarke repeats.

“Yeah,” he nods, one hand absently scratching his face, blocking her previously excellent view of his freckles. “Some of our friends are coming over to see Atom on Sunday, and I can’t really ditch them when I already said they could crash at my place. Unless you have plans for that weekend already?”

Clarke shakes her head. “No, I’m free then.”

“Alright. So…” he searches for something to say before finishing, “I’ll see you then?”

Clarke laughs and smirks back at him. “And before then too, I imagine.”

She can’t decipher Bellamy’s expression as his dark eyes look down at her, but it makes her feel warm and pleased and Clarke has to stop herself from beaming. He offers her some of his chips, which she accepts and eats quickly, though she realizes this is a mistake when they leave the break room together – holding them would have given her something to focus on instead of wondering what to do with her hands for the whole 50 seconds it takes them to walk back to their desks.

They're still busy the next week, but it doesn’t bother her so much any more. Whenever they pass each other in the office, Clarke’s eyes catch his with a small smile, and his returning smirk no longer feels like an apology, but something to look forward to, any awkwardness having given way to a few nerves, but mostly anticipation.

Clarke’s not worried that she and Bellamy haven’t made any concrete plans by Friday morning, knows they’ll just figure it out later, but at lunchtime she and Raven get a call about a double homicide, and they know before the Captain tells them that they can forget about having a weekend doing anything other than work.

She doesn’t have to tell Bellamy that she’s busy because he’s one of the many that’s tasked with helping. They end up following different leads so she only sees him in the meetings, and Clarke pretends not to notice how his eyes look more concerned whenever they fall on her as the hours get later and the case reaches wider.

By Tuesday morning it’s all over, and they’ve even managed to solve a cold case from a few years back while they were at it, but it doesn't feel like an ending, not when Clarke’s still so tired from having barely slept and there's dirt all over her forearms from literally digging at the ground for the last body. She and Raven are first to leave the scene, their car quiet initially until Raven asks her if she’s alright. Clarke knows it's out of kindness and friendship but it annoys her a little, the implication that Raven can deal with the things they see sometimes better than she can. And she knows that's unfair, and tomorrow it won’t matter, but right now she just wants to be upset and irrational and not have to explain it to anyone.

Clarke tries not to brush Raven off, but disappears to lock herself in the bathroom as soon as they’re back at the precinct. Running a few paper towels under the tap, she brushes them over her arms until the mirror tells her she’s clean, but she can still feel the dirt under her nails, can picture all the specks that are no longer on her sleeves. Clarke decides a change of shirt would be best, but when she gets to her locker she realizes she's already wearing the spare, thanks to too many back to back days at the precinct and not enough time at her apartment. A clean shirt is really the last thing she's upset about today but it’s what sets her off, her breaths uneven and too frequent, hands shaking slightly against the cold metal of her locker door.

She's not sure how long she’s been stood there before Clarke hears him approach, his quick steps loud enough over her now quiet, but still too shallow breaths. Clarke doesn't turn to look when he stops close to her left shoulder, not quite touching her. She can feel Bellamy hesitate before his hand reaches out and gently closes over one of hers. Even though she's watching it happen, it takes her a few moments to register that he's slowly unclenching her left fist before moving on to the right one. Bellamy stays silent as he brushes his thumbs over her palms, smoothing out the deep pink indentations she didn't notice her nails had made.

Clarke tilts to her side and her head dips forward to rest against Bellamy’s chest, trapping their hands between them. He responds by resting his chin in the parting of her hair, continuing to rub his thumbs over her palms until she counters by twisting her fingers through his and holding on tight.

"You okay?"

She nods once, her ear scraping against the open teeth of his jacket zipper. "Yes," she breathes, the movement pressing her lips into the soft fabric of his shirt.

This time it's true.


End file.
